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Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Break the Tape: Leaking Life

Welcome, friends, for today's edition ofBreak the Tape. Essentially, our goal is to identify the lies that repeat themselves over and over again in our minds, break the tape that automatically begins plays when ever we feel we've fallen short, and learn a new song to sing in its place.

Meet Summer. I'm just getting to know her, but this girl has a way with words. She is many things, but what strikes me is her hunger for more of God, which is probably why she writes on a blog called "A Thirst for God." She lives only 10 blocks from a lighthouse, but I'm seeing lots of light emanating even from here.

It all started when I brought Psalm 139 to bed with a hot
steaming mug of chamomile tea, mulling it over in my mouth, breathing in its earthy
fragrance and then licking the honey resting at the bottom. I rested on verse 14, and at first the words
seem embarrassingly forthright, prideful even: “fearfull-y and wonderful-ly
made.” It feels hard to say, a passage
that I would pass over quickly, like I was reading about breasts in the Song of
Solomon. Inappropriate. Overly intimate. I kept chewing over these words, knowing
there was a truth I was dodging. Finally,
I fell asleep.

All through the night “fearfully and wonderfully made” wound
its way through my dreams, and then appeared with the first light of morning. Repetition had stripped the verse of the false
veneer of pride. The first jumps of
delight appeared and I turned this key over and over in my hand, as if a
foreign object I’d searched for as Mary for the secret garden key.

I was around her age, ten, when I lost it.

That first school day in Ohio’s rich farm country, twenty
hours from my grammar school in Maine, I wore a white shirt with suspendered blue
plaid pants, was called a clown and teased every time I opened my Eastern
mouth. I stuffed any hope of an easy
move into the bottom of the toy chest along with the suspendered outfit. I never wore it again. Jr. high girls can be cruel and those four
years my brain ate a new channel of self-despising all other thoughts filtered
into. At home I was loved, but at school
I was pursued as a scapegoat of pre-teen inferiority. I proved an easy target.

Hunchback bent, I
lived deformed, leaning toward those as unhealed as me expecting them to turn,
a lighthouse signaling glory. False hope
glimmered and was gone as each passed in front.
I forgot to stand straight to receive living water from the One. Forgot to listen to the One: the Voice always
speaking, inviting, affirming, challenging.

I walked leaking life.

The One eternally holding Living water says:“My people have
committed two sins; they have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have
dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.” (Jeremiah 2:13 )

Cannot hold water, those I was asking to stamp “Gift” on my
forehead.

Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me. You have swallowed death, even this death of
unholy judgment. You know who I am: Your
child, Your daughter, Your beloved, Your friend, Your sister.

I sit with that. The
God of the Universe calls me His child, accepted just as I am, loved here and
now, before I get cleaned off. A sponge,
I swell, soaking up life-giving words:

If He gives me grace, I can too.

Later I go to the fitness center and after working out, find
a quiet room while my children play with others. I open the scripture back up. The key is already in the verse! ”I praise You that I am fearfully and
wonderfully made.” It is another
thanksgiving that I need to break open the core of my being.

Lately I’ve started accepting the imperfect gifts of each
day, thanking God, lifting each “failed” interaction up, asking Him to bless
and fill them with Himself…to redeem. So
why can’t I do that with myself?

Yes, I am imperfect.
I will always be imperfect but my continued anger at myself and the
story that has created me is not making matters easier. Can I accept God’s gift of me? Can I lift myself back up (my tiny loaves)
and pray that He will bless and multiply?

Sunday evening, heavy summer sun invites us west to the Lake
Michigan shore. As soon as we hit the
sand, the kids dressed all in red swimsuits, scatter and I tip my face to the
sun, turning my ear to listen.

Summer, “thank me,” I hear.

Instead of sitting on our blanket, I begin to play too. I push rocks stuck deep at the water’s edge that look like they might have been a wicca
circle occasionally glancing up to see my
pony-tailed husband laugh helping five-year old Madeline balance on the boogy
board in the waves.

God, help me too to learn balance…freedom… and to love me, because
not loving me is creating a dam of my life, truncating my ability to open my
arms wide, fearless.

As I push the large rocks around the wet sand, forming a
cross, the voice of God comes clear. I
listen: who’s authority will you accept as true? The junior high girls from your past or the
God of the Universe?

The question seems a bit ludicrous. “I thank You for I am fearfully and
wonderfully made” comes straight from scripture and who am I to question the
God of the Universe’s authority?

He is the Light of the World, so why would I study someone
else’s carnival mirror?

I stand on the flat rock at the center of the cross beam and
lift my arms up to the sky. Who am I NOT
to thank You for the gift that You have given…to refuse any gift from You? Bless the Lord O my soul and all that is
within me and so I lift up my fullness and my emptiness, my imperfections and
my gifts.

The Roman Catholic priest, Romano
Guardini, writes in his essay, “The Acceptance of Oneself,” words that invite
me to open the gift:

The act of self-acceptance is the
root of all things. I must agree to be the person who I am. Agree to the
qualifications which I have. Agree to live within my limits. … The clarity and
the courageousness of this acceptance is the foundation of all existence.

The beach has emptied for dinner time and I stand, balancing
on this rock cross, arms up. You loved
me even while I was a sinner. And if You
could, open heart, pierced hands accept me, than who am I not to accept the
gift?

And if I am a gift, so is the precious little one that just
toddled up in her bathing suit covered with red cherries, splashing through the
puddle beside the cross. I look into her
brown face with the four new serrated white teeth and tell her that she too is
a gift of God. She keeps coming back for
more through the rest of the evening, eyes wide drinking love.

This is why this knowledge is the opposite of pride. Being a gift does not mean the least of these
is not. Being filled with this
thanksgiving makes me want to go out into the highways and byways and put faces
in my hands and speak truth into dry hearts.
“You” teenager with the hungry, aching eyes, “are fearfully and
wonderfully made.” “You” gangly man-child whose mind never grew into his body and
whose arms twist in constant motion, “are fearfully and wonderfully made.”

I want to whisper it into the heart of everyone I see and on
the way home I tell the cashier at the grocery store with the lovely lips and
the dreary store coat, “I hope you know you are lovely.” She smiles and the light goes on in those almond-shaped
eyes just for a moment.

Want to read more of Summer? Of course you do! Click here to visit her blog, A Thirst for God.

10 comments
:

This is so beautiful. My husband used this verse on Sunday in his sermon on gentleness to remind us that we are to treat each other gently because, like a rare and expensive vase, we are of infinite value because we were "fearfully and wonderfully made" by God. I think the other side of this post is how we treat each other, how often we forget that other people are a gift as well and we should treat each other as such.

I could relate to this a bit, having moved from PA to East TN when I was 11. I was a stranger in a strange land, to be sure. Those preteen years are so difficult even without a big move! I'm glad, Summer, for God's victory here. You and your family are so beautiful.

"I walked leaking life. " Oh, do I like this. Leaking rather than living. And your image of taking the faces of the wounded ones in your hands to tell them they are beautiful. I think I will do that today.Thank you for this.